A novel treatment approach may help to alleviate one of the most common and debilitating symptoms associated with cancer and its treatments—fatigue. According to data presented at the 2019 Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium,1 the combination of short-course dexamethasone plus standardized...
For the treatment of BRAF V600-mutated advanced melanoma, we now have three BRAF/MEK inhibitor combinations that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: dabrafenib/trametinib, vemurafenib/cobimetinib, and encorafenib/binimetinib. Although the toxicity profiles for these combinations ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, of the Institut Gustave Roussy and Paris-Sud-Paris-Saclay University, Villejuif, and colleagues, the long-term follow-up of the phase III COMBI-d and COMBI-v trials has shown a pooled 5-year overall survival rate of 34% ...
The ESMO Congress continues to grow as a pivotal platform for research in clinical oncology. At the ESMO Congress 2019, important findings were showcased in more than 2,200 studies, including 93 late-breaking abstracts. The ASCO Post summarized much of that news in separate articles over several...
In a late-breaking, oral presentation at the ESMO Congress 2019, Margaret von Mehren, MD, presented results from INVICTUS, a pivotal phase III clinical trial of ripretinib in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST).1 Ripretinib is an investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor...
For one of the rarest and most aggressive of tumors—cholangiocarcinoma—two novel molecularly targeted agents yielded encouraging outcomes in advanced disease in studies reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019. In the phase III ClarIDHy trial, the risk of disease...
Formal study discussant Eleni Efstathiou, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, commented on results of the PROfound trial at the ESMO Congress 2019. “This is the first phase III targeted therapy trial to deliver a positive outcome in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer,” she...
Treatment with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib delayed disease progression and appears to improve survival, compared with newer hormonal agents in men with pretreated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and homologous recombinant repair (HRR) genetic...
The invited discussant of the two trials in cervical and endometrial cancers presented at the ESMO Congress 2019 was Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy, who commented on what she called “exciting results in cancers with unmet needs.” Dr. Colombo noted: “The studies...
In studies reported at the ESMO Congress 2019, immunotherapy yielded encouraging outcomes in two gynecologic cancer populations in need of new treatments, including patients with advanced cervical cancer that is microsatellite-stable and patients previously treated for advanced endometrial cancer. ...
Only about 6 in 10 patients with lung cancer in the United States receive the minimal lung cancer treatments recommended by National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN) Guidelines, according to new research published by Blom et al in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Erik F. Blom, MD,...
The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab improved overall survival compared with chemotherapy as first-line therapy for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression of at least 1%, according to the results of CheckMate 227....
At a press conference at the ESMO Congress 2019, Pilar Garrido, MD, PhD, of Ramon y Cajal University Hospital, Madrid, commented on the FLAURA trial: “These results are good news for patients with lung cancer, which is the most common cause of cancer deaths. Advances in the understanding of the...
The invited discussant of the two trials in cervical and endometrial cancers presented at the ESMO Congress 2019 was Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy, who commented on what she called “exciting results in cancers with unmet needs.” Dr. Colombo noted: “The studies...
Immunotherapy studies reported at the ESMO Congress 2019 yielded encouraging outcomes in patients with advanced cervical cancer that is microsatellite-stable and patients previously treated for advanced endometrial cancer. The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab, with two different dosing...
At the ESMO Congress 2019, ovarian cancer was a topic of heightened interest, particularly due to findings reported in several important phase III studies of PARP inhibitors in front-line maintenance therapy for patients with newly diagnosed advanced disease—and not just those with BRCA mutations....
Immunotherapy has changed the treatment paradigms for melanoma, lung cancer, bladder cancer, and renal cancer. Now, checkpoint inhibitor therapy is making inroads in triple-negative breast cancer—one of the most difficult-to-treat aggressive types of breast cancer. Late-breaking results of the...
CDK4/6 inhibitors improve overall survival in advanced breast cancer, according to results of two important phase III trials reported at the ESMO Congress 2019. Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles Women’s Cancer Research Program, presented the findings from the...
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019, held September 27 to October 1 in Barcelona, welcomed clinicians, researchers, journalists, and exhibitors from around the world to hear advances across the oncology spectrum, in both clinical medicine and basic research. For this...
Data from a new study presented by Singal et al at The Liver Meeting found that patients with cirrhosis in the United States have substantial financial burden and this is associated with underuse of surveillance for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (Abstract 201). Improved intervention strategies are ...
Results from a preliminary research study showed the majority of patients aged 85 years and older were still alive in the short-term after undergoing segmental colectomy for stage II and III colon cancer. Kaur et al presented these findings at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress...
In the phase II Fol-BRITe study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Lansigan et al found that a short course of bendamustine/rituximab followed by consolidation with yttrium Y-90 ibritumomab tiuxetan (Y-90 ibritumomab tiuxetan) was associated with a high response rate and a high rate of...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Turcotte et al, analysis of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study Cohort showed that childhood cancer survivors treated with chemotherapy alone—particularly higher cumulative doses of platinum and alkylating agents—are at an increased risk of...
Head and neck melanoma appears to be on the rise in young people in the United States and Canada, according to a study by Nosayaba Osazuwa-Peters, BDS, PhD, MPH, CHES, of the Saint Louis University (SLU) School of Medicine, and colleagues. Because the prognosis of head and neck melanoma is...
A new JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics (JCO CCI) article highlights the challenges in—and need for—obtaining real-world evidence for assessing the effectiveness of precision medicine on areas such as survival, quality of life, cost, and health disparities. The paper, titled “Clinical Molecular...
At the 2019 ASCO Advocacy Summit, ASCO members from 35 states held more than 160 Congressional meetings, urging members of Congress to take action to advance policy priorities that improve patient access to cancer care, including: The Covering Life-Saving Investigations Needed in Cancer and Other...
Receiving a cancer diagnosis is a disorienting moment for our patients who are then faced with making difficult decisions regarding their treatment. In order to improve shared decision-making and to increase patient involvement in their care, it is essential to provide patients and their families...
The University of North Carolina (UNC) Department of Medicine recently announced the formation of the new UNC Blood Research Center, administratively housed within the Division of Hematology and Oncology. Nigel Key, MD, the Harold R. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Pathology and...
Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, Head of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, discussed the PRIMA/ENGOT-OV26/GOG-3012 trial along with the results of the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial of olaparib plus bevacizumab maintenance. According to Dr. Oaknin, the...
In women with advanced ovarian cancer responding to first-line chemotherapy, maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor niraparib significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 38% overall and by 60% in women with BRCA mutations. Even patients without a homologous recombination...
Although stem cells throughout the body acquire genetic mutations over time, usually these alterations do not affect how the stem cells function or cause disease. However, recent research in clonal hematopoiesis and aging has found an association between clonal expansion of hematopoietic cells with ...
In September 2019, Dr. Claire Harrison and colleagues, myself among them, presented two new analyses regarding the use of the JAK2 and FLT3 inhibitor fedratinib in myelofibrosis at the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) Annual Meeting, with resulting publication in Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the American College of Radiology (ACR) recently released seven updated practice parameters for medical providers who use radiation therapy to treat patients with cancer. The updated practice parameters synthesize the clinical best practices...
Barry Paul Sleckman, MD, PhD, a well-known cancer researcher who focuses on understanding how DNA double-strand breaks are generated and repaired—a key topic for cancer and immune system development and function—has been named Director of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of ...
Lung cancer remains the number one cancer killer, leading to about 150,000 deaths per year in the United States and accounting for approximately 25% of all cancer deaths in the nation. Early detection has improved survival in other malignancies such as breast, colon, and cervical cancers, but...
Advances in systemic therapy and supportive care, as well as ongoing improvements in surgical techniques, have led to improved survival for many patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. We have observed increased survival with FOLFIRINOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil, irinotecan,...
The Oncology Care Model was instituted in 2016 by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation as a move away from the fee-for-service payment model and toward value-based care. It has sparked discussion ever since. How should quality be defined? Whose and what values should it reflect? How...
Formal discussant Silke Gillessen, MD, of the Division of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, United Kingdom, agreed that this study is practice-changing. “The study was well designed and addressed an unmet clinical need that is commonly seen in the clinic. Until now we had no randomized...
Third-line treatment with cabazitaxel extended progression-free survival and overall survival in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the CARD trial. These results provide the first evidence from a randomized phase III trial for a survival benefit with third-line therapy, and ...
In an analysis from the phase III PACE-B trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Nicholas van As, MD, and colleagues found that shortened treatment courses with stereotactic body radiotherapy did not increase gastrointestinal or genitourinary acute toxicity vs intensity-modulated fractionated...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) initiative known as AACR Project Genomics Evidence Neoplasia Information Exchange (GENIE) is launching a 5-year, $36 million research collaboration with a coalition of nine biopharmaceutical companies. The goal of the project is to obtain clinical ...
It is with great sadness that we report Craig Alguire, MD, 42, died on October 11, 2019, at his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Diagnosed with grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme in 2015, Dr. Alguire chronicled the effects the cancer was having on his life in his Patient’s Corner column, published in...
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Chief of Breast Surgery, Kazuaki Takabe, MD, PhD, FACS, delivered the keynote address on immunotherapy for breast cancer at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society of Clinical Oncology (JSCO) in Fukuoka. During the meeting, Dr. Takabe also led a...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently awarded 12 new clinical trial research grants totaling more than $15 million over the next 4 years, many of them focusing on cancer. Also, the FDA awarded two new research grants for natural history studies in rare diseases, totaling more than...
American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn coined the term “paradigm shift” to connote a fundamental change in the basic concepts and practices of a standard scientific discipline. They are few and far between. To convince the entrenched oncologic surgery community in the 1960s and 1970s that...
On November 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved luspatercept-aamt (Reblozyl) for the treatment of anemia in adult patients with beta thalassemia who require regular red blood cell transfusions. Beta thalassemia is a blood disorder that reduces the production of hemoglobin. In...
As first-line treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer, the addition of veliparib during induction followed by veliparib maintenance therapy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death in the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial reported at the European Society for Medical...
Men with higher levels of free (biologically active) testosterone and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in their blood are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to research presented by Travis et al at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference....
Testing for levels of the serum biomarker cancer antigen 125 (CA125) in the blood may be a useful tool for the detection of ovarian cancer, and could help detect other types of cancer among patients in primary care, according to research presented by Funston et al at the 2019 National Cancer...
From 1997 to 2016, incidence and deaths from hepatocellular carcinoma have tripled in England, according to research presented by Burton et al at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference. Anya Burton, PhD, a cancer epidemiologist at Public Health England, said in a press ...